Minion Builds Need a Nerf

This thread got a lot more traction than I expected when I posted it... A few thoughts.

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Over exagerration on the OP's part regarding dps.

Which is a pity, given that the OP's feedback is else valid ( because you never need 10ml dps really )

I wrote the Animate Weapon guide here with 600k views, the 10M DPS was from my actual character with about 15ex worth of gear, and 12M sDPS. Most of that cost is in the abyssal jewels, a "budget" 5ex version would still do 5-10M boss DPS (aka melts bosses in 10 seconds instead of 5).

Zombie builds probably don't do quite as much damage but honestly the difference is pretty trivial when actually playing it.

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Tsokushin wrote:

This is does bring up an interesting question in the balance of summoner builds in this sense. OP, you're claiming that the damage/defense is too high for the investment. When you say this do you mean solely by the tree, or do you mean the lack of active gameplay in achieving these in game?

This is an important distinction to make.

Attempting to just blanket nerf this will undoubtedly hurt Dominating Blow, Summon Raging Spirit, Dancing Duo, Heralds of Agony/Pain when they truly aren't the problem considering they require risk to reach full potential in combat.

This is one of the better points, honestly.

I love Animate Weapon, played it to 94 in both Delirium and Harvest. (Built new characters mostly to complete challenges as some of the boss-specific challenges are hard to do with minions. And with lockdown still persisting, I had the time to do it)

It does seem more fair to me that persistent minion builds should have more sacrifice in DPS or clear speed than minions you have to stop and summon.

People dislike Animate Weapon because it's clunky, i.e. have to click a few times when entering a map before popping flasks and running through packs at full speed... (as opposed to cookie-clicker mode with spectres, where you immediately run through everything at full speed).

Difficulty with balancing spectres is that all buffs to enemies to make the content challenging indirectly buff that build as well. Which takes it to silly places quickly. But, spectres and being able to animate enemies is cool and people like it and I get that.

Problem with the vocal PoE community (especially on reddit) is that anything other than 100% max clearspeed gems is considered unplayable nerfed trash when it is instead maybe 15% less efficient. I don't envy the game designers this problem, but it doesn't change fact that many minion builds are a bit too good relative to budget and trivialize progression through the content.

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Andrius319 wrote:

I have watched that video fruz linked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECtK_NJwiB0
and god, just how much im detached from community environment reality.

I'm not posting to see this minion stuff nerfed or not nerfed, but just wanted to ask, how do you enjoy such playstyle. I mean, all you do mostly is left click and run and see world burn, its almost the same as watch streamer play, no, its more like playing candy crush where every click explodes all candies. What's even a point, what are players running for? More power to run even faster?

Sirus quote "why run? whats the point?"

But that easily describes every build in existence. Honestly many of the popular minion builds I have played have just as many actions to consider as other so called hands on builds.

Keep in mind that build in that video is before death mark. those zombies are not attacking the shaper with zero input from the summoner.

most summoners have various buff and direction skills to control their minions.

things like curses, desecrate , offerings, movement skills .. or even other minion types. hell many summoners use guard skills these days.

That is not a thin list at all.

Hell my trapper back in legion was just a combination of throwing trap, movement skill and a vaal skill trigger... that is substantially less things to do than the list i just gave.

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MoLoK13 wrote:

This is one of the better points, honestly.

It does seem more fair to me that persistent minion builds should have more sacrifice in DPS or clear speed than minions you have to stop and summon.

the difference can be pretty considerable

I did some math a few weeks ago but for every .9 damage a zombie did , skeletons did 1.25 , dominating blow minions were doing 1.3 and purity sentinels were like 3.2

obviously spectres are an anomaly because their balance is tied to general mob balance.

Golems can hit hard.. but they usually take some setup and until you have that setup.. they are kind of .. shit

There is a scale in poe that players usually need to balance it. Offense and defense.

Class that naturally has defensive growth like marauder or summoner can completely forgo most defense section compare to other classes like ranger - a class that need big investment to balance defense to offense to not completely become useless against anti-range growing content of this game. You can't deal damage if you can't live.

TBH i don't care about people picking necromancer anymore. The game has become so freaking stupid that unless you play marauder, duelist or witch to get natural defensive grow or go "kill them before they kill you" shadow; you should prepare to fork out dozen of ex to bring your char to a8 sirus comfortably.

Other classes simply cannot match what marauder, witch and shadow have to offer against current content without busted investment.

Buff weak classes, otherwise nerf after nerfs change nothing but solidify the cheapest options between classes, which is usually marauder, witch and shadow.

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Fruz wrote:

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

So wait, now its not just minions op, but only "good" minion builds op?

Of course, nobody has been complaining that SRS are OP here ( because they aren't, they can be an interesting choice to go through the story cheaply, but nothing OP ), or dancing dervish, stuff like that.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

And like I said, minions are basically totems but with better scaling

And better speed, and in many cases safer ( more miet shields, in most cases no need to recast stuff to keep going ).

But totem and minion builds do share a lot of similarities for sure.


Casting skelly is similar to casting totems, but skeleton builds usually have other minions too ( spectres, zombies ? golems ? ), because pretty much all of these things scale the same way ... mostly with the same nodes.

Like I said, it's like totems but better. It wouldn't have been so bad but ever since they took away that other totem on hierophant there's really no way for it to stand a chance, totems needs too many specialized items to scale decently and unlike typical spells/attacks supported by totems the minions themselves get a lot more power more evenly as they level.

But as strong as that BAMA build scaled into t19 100% delirium, the underlying issue there is how hard it is to scale up for that content. My hollow palm champion may have done almost all the work in delirium for me, but he couldn't reliably clear t16 100% delirium by a longshot. Still got nerfed heavily all the same.

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Universalis wrote:

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deepinggiap wrote:

The new Broodmother build doesn't even need a 5l to decimate sirus/shaper.

So whoever said that summoner build need 6l to do endgame is false.

Last league I played a summoners. Passing uberlab was cake walk, while other chars I played then have quite big problem again izaro if they do it at 75.

Zombies grunting was annoying af so I dropped the summoner.

It's not really new, i checked this "build" and it's the same thing i'm playing since league start. Thus i'm also using 9zombs & 10skel.
For sure you dont need a 6 link since spectres are going into a mini 10exs helmet. Each cluster large or medium (x6) worth two times a 6link.
Well the whole build is like 50 ex mini, without the express need of a 6link

It still possible to play sentries with low budget (6l regalias are less than 2 ex...) but damage is ...not the same...

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2540439

what build are you even using??? Devouring diadem is like 10-20c. The most expensive unique is Akaralli's Fang which is usually less than 40c. The damn jar is 1c.

I don't even know what kind of build are you even using to need a 10ex helmet for spectres.

This show how complely botched the balancing in this game is. Clearly you never check the build. Liar liar chicken dinner.

Spectres isn't even main dps here, they're buffer.

people will just play whatever is OP. and that will become the top in ninja.

i just dont like this "balancing".

so many builds got gutted.


nobody give a shit about nerfed builds. everyone will just move on to next op builds and forget about it.


OP is probably asking in good faith and all but i don't know.

probably gut nerf and become like ice spear

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deepinggiap wrote:

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Universalis wrote:

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deepinggiap wrote:

The new Broodmother build doesn't even need a 5l to decimate sirus/shaper.

So whoever said that summoner build need 6l to do endgame is false.

Last league I played a summoners. Passing uberlab was cake walk, while other chars I played then have quite big problem again izaro if they do it at 75.

Zombies grunting was annoying af so I dropped the summoner.

It's not really new, i checked this "build" and it's the same thing i'm playing since league start. Thus i'm also using 9zombs & 10skel.
For sure you dont need a 6 link since spectres are going into a mini 10exs helmet. Each cluster large or medium (x6) worth two times a 6link.
Well the whole build is like 50 ex mini, without the express need of a 6link

It still possible to play sentries with low budget (6l regalias are less than 2 ex...) but damage is ...not the same...

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2540439

what build are you even using??? Devouring diadem is like 10-20c. The most expensive unique is Akaralli's Fang which is usually less than 40c. The damn jar is 1c.

I don't even know what kind of build are you even using to need a 10ex helmet for spectres.

This show how complely botched the balancing in this game is. Clearly you never check the build. Liar liar chicken dinner.

Spectres isn't even main dps here, they're buffer.

Oh sorry, i Confounded that shit build you are talking about with the 150 million dps sentries i got.

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Universalis wrote:

Oh sorry, i Confounded that shit build you are talking about with the 150 million dps sentries i got.

I have 300mln dps build for less than 5ex. You're doing something terribly wrong there - huge currency waste.

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IAmBetterThanSirus wrote:

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Universalis wrote:

Oh sorry, i Confounded that shit build you are talking about with the 150 million dps sentries i got.

I have 300mln dps build for less than 5ex. You're doing something terribly wrong there - huge currency waste.

Mine is redemption sentries with 2x clusters, still not doing 3 but i have 10k ES.
Considering i dont need to aim anything and that it clears screen in less than a second.

let me know yours 300M dps for 5 ex please

Link in my sig

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Universalis wrote:

Mine is redemption sentries with 2x clusters, still not doing 3 but i have 10k ES.
Considering i dont need to aim anything and that it clears screen in less than a second.

let me know yours 300M dps for 5 ex please

Link in my sig

300mln dps sentries in harvest with 12k ES, you can easly google it

your link is item in standard that is unusable(so it is trash) in league - I would't even pay 1c for a standard item (as I don't play standard, always 40/40 league)